‘Forty-five seconds!’ called out Mrs Thatcher, and I was now in a quandary. If Connie now was anything like the Connie I knew then, she wasn’t going to take no for an answer, and if we overran it would be a Code 4-22: ‘Opening Time Deficit’, which meant anything over the six minutes would be docked on the next library opening. I glanced towards where the two Library Opening Times Compliance Officers were staring at us from the door, in the same manner vultures might regard an unwell zebra.
‘Mr Major?’ said Neville Chamberlain, using her Seventeenth-Century-School-Ma’am-That-Must-Be-Obeyed voice. ‘Our library is a special place and not to be disrespected.’
‘How is it being disrespected?’ asked Connie in an even tone. ‘Really, I’d like to know.’
‘You have a serious attitude problem,’ said Mrs Mallett, taking instant umbrage at being questioned directly by a lower animal.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Connie, ‘how is the library being disrespected – ma’am?’
There was a sudden unpleasant hush. Shock, anticipation of violence, confusion – maybe all three. I took a deep breath. Upset one Mallett and you upset them all. Mind you, the Malletts were always upset about something. Politics, local government, socialists, the price of onions. When How to Cook a Wild Potato went from the BBC to Channel Four they couldn’t talk about anything else for months. Irrespective, I took my Librarying seriously and I’d never been a huge fan of the Malletts – and a chance to piss them off with the added bonus of plausible deniability should never be missed. I paused for a moment, then turned to Connie.
‘Do you have a library card?’
‘I do,’ she said.
‘Then the loan goes ahead.’
‘Terrific,’ said Mrs Mallett, shedding all vestiges of Neville Chamberlain completely, ‘so we’re just going to start handing out books to every bunny that walks in the door?’
‘It’s a library, Isadora,’ I said, ‘we loan out books. And “bunny” isn’t really an acceptable term any more.’
She laughed in a mocking fashion.
‘C’mon, Peter, it’s only a name, a word, a label – like a hat or a car or an avocado or something. It means nothing.’
‘What about “leporiphobic”?’ I asked. ‘I suppose that’s just a word too?’
I felt Isadora rankle at the riposte. I shouldn’t really have said it, but oddly, I think I might have been grandstanding in Connie’s presence. But I was, in fact, correct. They were very hot on acceptable rabbit terminology down at the Rabbit Compliance Taskforce, and while RabCoT’s relationship with the rabbit community was strained, we had to appear even-handed and without bias. Even referring to rabbits collectively as ‘The Rabbit’ was a little iffy these days.
‘Twenty-five seconds!’ said Mrs Thatcher with increased agitation. ‘We have to be out of here, Mr Major.’
Before Mrs Mallett had time to argue, I beckoned Connie to the front desk. The Sole Librarian stared at her library card, then at Connie.
‘Your name’s Clifford Rabbit?’
‘It’s my husband’s.’
‘That’s a Code 4-20 infraction right there,’ said Mrs Mallett in a triumphant tone – it turned out she had been studying my codes after all – ‘“Misuse of library property”.’
‘The book’s for my husband,’ said Connie. ‘Customers may collect books on others’ behalf. True?’
She directed the last word at the Sole Librarian, who confirmed her agreement by stamping the library card and the book and handing them back.2
‘Ten seconds!’ yelled Mrs Thatcher, and we all hurried towards the door. The other members of the team had already made their way out, and as the door closed and the lock clunked, Mrs Thatcher and the Compliance Officers compared stopwatches. We had made it with only three seconds to spare.
‘Well done, everyone,’ I said, trying to inject a sense of cheeriness into the proceedings, but only Stanley Baldwin and Mrs Thatcher were standing beside me. The others had instead congregated around the observers outside, and in particular Norman and Victor Mallett, presumably to question them on how they let a rabbit slip past them and into the library in the first place, and then figuring out the next move. Already I could see Norman’s neck turning a nasty shade of purple, and several of the villagers directed frosty glances in my direction.
I looked around to see whether Connie was still about and caught sight of her as she leapt in a series of energetic bounds down the street towards the Leominster road, her library book in one hand and a mobile phone clamped to her ear in the other.
She hadn’t recognised me at all.
‘Why was there a rabbit in the village?’ asked Mrs Thatcher, following my gaze.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, it was a good Blitz, Peter,’ she said, then hurriedly moved away as she saw Victor and Norman Mallett approach.
‘Now then,’ said Norman in the lofty tones of someone who believes, despite bountiful evidence to the contrary, that they have the moral high ground, ‘let’s have a little chat about whether bunnies are welcome in the library, shall we?’
But he didn’t get to vent his anger. At that precise moment Mr Beeton gave out a quiet moan and collapsed in a heap. We called an ambulance while Lloyd George and Mrs Thatcher took turns in giving him CPR, but to no avail. We found out later he suffered a heart attack, which was the first and last time I’d had a Code 2-22: ‘Unavoidable death while Librarying’.
‘I told you he looked unwell,’ said Stanley Baldwin.
Toast & TwoLegsGood
RabCoT or the Rabbit Compliance Taskforce was originally named the ‘Rabbit Crime Taskforce’, but that was deemed too aggressive, so was quietly renamed, much to Mr Smethwick’s annoyance. He had wanted the original name to send a clear message that Cunicular Criminality would not be tolerated.
‘So Mr Beeton just keeled over?’ asked Pippa at breakfast on Monday morning. She’d been out all day and the night before and I hadn’t heard her come in, but that wasn’t unusual. I like to turn in early in order to read, and her bedroom was on the ground floor and she could totally look after herself these days. Sometimes it’s better not to know when daughters don’t come home for the night. She was twenty, but even so, still best not to know.
‘Yup,’ I said, ‘went down like a ninepin. Mind you, he was eighty-eight, so it’s not like it wasn’t expected.’
I looked out of the kitchen window at Hemlock Towers opposite, where up until Saturday Mr Beeton had been a long-term resident. We lived in what had once been the stables to the old house, but unlike the Towers, it had been modernised over the years and was considerably more comfortable.
‘I wonder who will take it over?’ I mused – the impressively turreted building was the jewel in Much Hemlock’s not inconsiderable collection of fine buildings. Parts of it dated back to the fourteenth century and some say that the pockmarks in the façade were the result of erratic musket-fire during the Civil War. The marksmanship of parliamentary forces, I figured, was little better than that of Star Wars stormtroopers.
‘Someone like Mr Beeton, I should imagine,’ said Pippa, ‘lots of money, an imperviousness to cold.’
‘… and insanely suspicious of modern plumbing,’ I added, ‘with a fondness for mice and rising damp.’
Pippa smiled and handed me a slice of toast with marmalade before pouring herself another coffee.
‘I was over at Toby’s yesterday evening,’ she said.